greetings, all ---
as long as folks are paying attention to
this whole time zone foolishness
foisted on us by congress
[ as if they don't have --real-- work to do; but, i digress ],
it seems to be a good time to inquire about my pet peeve.
please note:
this is the --one-- thing about freebsd
that --really--, and i mean --really--, hacks me off.
i have yet to figure out
how to turn off the warm_weather fast_time bug^h^h^hfeature.
i am outside chicago, so i am six hours earlier than london.
i choose to not observe fast_time any more than absolutely necessary.
twice a year,
these nimrods in washington actually expect me to
drop what i am doing and
go around everywhere and
change the clocks.
to put not too fine a point on it, i refuse.
[ quite by accident,
i discovered that this eliminates what i call "solar_shock".
now, when others grumble on monday
about the sun not being where it was on friday,
i laugh.
]
the first thing i did was to rtfm.
then, i selected a box on which to experiment.
the method that seems to work most successfully is
to tell the box it's in arizona.
this would be great if i were in, say, laramie, but,
i haven't moved there, yet.
so, it's a little irritating.
then, i thought i would be exceedingly clever
by creating the missing file
that would be logically found between arizona and indiana,
using those files as templates.
surprise, surprise, they're in binary; just like --windoze--.
having read eric raymond's "art of unix programming",
i agree completely that
configuration files should be in human_readable form,
not encoded in binary, mega_corp style.
i have put off playing with this approach.
last, i tried the environment variable trick,
both for the local zone and for utc
[ surely, i can make the box do everything in utc, i thought ].
sha_ZAM!!!
i thought i had struck the mother_lode.
everything was working just as i wanted.
i smiled smugly to myself.
euphoric,
i arose from my throne [ no, silly, the other one ],
outstretched my arm and commanded "shutdown -h now".
alas, logged messages were timestamped off by one hour.
i was crestfallen.
this suggests that the mobo clock is on utc [ or something ],
fbsd is kloodging this into local fast_time and, then,
the environment variable is re_kloodging the kloodge
to display what i want to see,
but shutdown doesn't honor the re_kloodge.
or some such.
this is the point where i gave up.
i recount the above from memory.
the last time i tried to get this right was about a year ago.
windoze gets this right
[ this is one of the few times when i prefer windoze;
think about this
].
i cam select a time_zone, then uncheck the "observe fast_time" box.
no problem.
but, my 'nix boxen have their own agenda.
i solved this by setting them to what displays as utc and
what produces the right epoch_offset,
then i calculate the correct timestamps myself in my apps.
i simply accept that my timestamps are right and
some of the system generated timestamps are wrong.
c'est la guerre.
------------------------------------------
i wouldn't bother writing except that congress decided to meddle,
so some really_smart_people are paying attention.
all i want is
to be able to set my boxes to utc, with no fast_time, and
to have my apps and all of the other apps agree on what the clock says,
at --all-- times.
it would be a plus if
there were binary files for the 4 contiguous us time_zones
[ 2 of these already exist ],
--if-- that's the trick to getting what i want.
[ i suspect that
it would be considered a plus by others elsewhere on the planet if
such files existed for all 25 hourly zones and
the several whose offset is not a multiple of 60 minutes.
unlike mowing the lawn,
this job well done would not have to be done again.
]
it would be a really big plus if
non_textual config files were eliminated, but
i suspect that this is a bigger project than
most folks have time for right now.
[ if there is interest,
since, at least, --i-- care about this,
perhaps i could take this on,
but i'm full_up for the next several months.
however,
it strikes me that this might make a useful project for
some one or more of my students.
any thoughts?
]
-----------------------------------
thanks for letting me inquire.
if anyone thinks this sufficiently worthy of
either positive or negative response,
please cc me as i am not subscribed to -questions.
rob spellberg
woodstock, illinois
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